Re: Thumbnailing service project; opinions, suggestions?

[Mark <markg85 gmail com>]

On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 1:08 PM, Philip Van Hoof <spam pvanhoof be> wrote:
> On Mon, 2009-10-19 at 21:35 +0200, Mark wrote:
>
>> For Jannis and Philip,
>> Nice tumbler talk but could you two make suggestions for my project? ^_^
>
> As I already wrote:
>
> A PDF thumbnailer that implements the 'specialized thumbnailer' spec
> that doesn't need to link with gdkpixbuf.
>
> I think that matches your project description, it fits in the architec-
> ture of Tumbler (and if done right we could make this a project that
> many people will use and install alongside Tumbler).
>
> It's much more simple than developing an entire thumbnailer, as you only
> need to implement one D-Bus method called "Create".
>
> - You'll have to work with a queue handling the thumbnailing, as Create
>  isn't allowed to block, which means that GThreadQueue could for
>  example be used (which means that your work will involve dealing with
>  threads).
>
> - You'll need to deal with DBus .service registration
>
> - You'll need to code against a specification (which is in general
>  harder than doing your own thing - but schools like that)
>
> - It's a thumbnailer service and it could work standalone (which means
>  that it fits your requirements for school)
>
> - You wont have the NIH syndrome. Nobody has yet made a PDF thumbnailer
>  that implements the 'specialized thumbnailer' spec
>
> - It sounds doable within 8 weeks
>
> I suggest that you set up a gitorious repository, start with making a
> skeleton out of the maemo-video-thumbnailer project, adapt all the files
> that you read about in the specification, hollow out the methods, and
> then implement them for PDF files instead of video (GStreamer).
>
> You can check out libpoppler for dealing with PDF files. Poppler can be
> compiled not to use gdkpixbuf, but instead cairo as far as I know.
>
> I strongly advise to do that.
>
>
> Anyway, it's up to you.
>
> Also, it wont be about free-choice unless your thumbnailer implements
> the specification. Each new home-brew specification that isn't agreed by
> multiple people adds API clutter to the platform.
>
> ps. Specialized thumbnailers spec:
>
> http://live.gnome.org/ThumbnailerSpec#head-83f1d6d2084e75742104681ad94c29b8d0dd2052
>
> ps. Note that we might make minor changes to this spec in the following
> days. Among them might be the optional Cancel() method and a parameter
> to the Create() method called "scheduler" (which you can also ignore,
> for now).
>
>
> --
> Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer
> home: me at pvanhoof dot be
> gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org
> http://pvanhoof.be/blog
> http://codeminded.be
>
>

I do miss some vital parts:
- Designing the daemon and plugin architecture
- Making those 2

That's what i see missing now but i probably missed a few other parts.